For 23 years, Bob Buford spent countless hours talking with and seeking guidance from Peter Drucker, the father of modern management.

When their conversations turned more philosophical and less about business, Drucker allowed his young protégé to turn on a recorder.

The end result is Drucker & Me: What a Texas Entrepreneur Learned From the Father of Modern Management, slated for release next month.

“I didn’t want to write just another book about Peter,” says the 74-year-old Buford in his office in Uptown. “This shows an utterly different side of Peter — his human side.”

It took Buford five years to figure out what to do with more than 1,000 transcribed pages of conversation.

The book is in the style of Tuesdays With Morrie and The Last Lecture, and includesBuford’s charming recollections of his time with Drucker, who died at his home in Claremont, Calif., eight years ago at 95.

“The last meeting I had with Peter was Sept. 29, 2005, 12 days before he died,” Buford says. “I went with the specific task of convincing him to leave his legacy to good hands.”

Much of what Drucker espoused was revolutionary in the 1960s but has become natural order today: Workers are the most valuable assets, leaders are learners and innovation is discipline, not inspiration.

“Peter’s point of view is always from the highest point and the longest-sighted of all,” Buford says. “Peter said: ‘People call me a futurist. I’m not a futurist. I look out the window and see the futurity of present events.’ He looks at real things that are happening and says, ‘What if?’”

When talking about Drucker, Buford uses the present tense. “That’s because Peter’s still here,” Buford says, waving his hand at the books on his shelf.

Guiding megachurches

In his introduction, Buford calls his friendship with Drucker unlikely. “One of us spoke English with a heavy Austrian accent. The other spoke Texan. I owned a cable television company. Peter didn’t even own a television. I followed the Dallas Cowboys. He followed Japanese art.

“But as we would both learn a few years into our relationship, we shared a passion for a phenomenon that could literally change the world.”

By the time the two met, Drucker was 72 and had written almost all of his major books. Buford was 42, rich but looking for more enrichment. They found common ground in what they saw as hope for the future: the evangelical megachurch movement.

As founder and president of the Leadership Network, Buford has become a worldwide mentor of megachurches, infusing social management and leadership principles into large religious organizations.

There were about 600 evangelical megachurches in the United States when Buford began the nonprofit Leadership Network in 1984. Today there are more than 6,000. And it’s become a global phenomenon.

Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif., and Watermark Community Church in North Dallas are among the thousands of churches worldwide that have sought his guidance.

“There are people that impress you, and then others that impact you. Bob is the latter,” says Barry Davis, CEO of Dallas-based EnLink Midstream LLC, who is on the leadership team building Watermark Fort Worth. “People with expertise on the subject say that he has had a greater impact on churches in America in the last 25 years than any other person.”

The book is a quick read — not exactly like a conversation with Buford.

“Linda [his wife of 52 years] says my basic mode of speaking is to start slow and ramble thereafter,” Buford says. “Peter was kinda that way, too. He would trail off to something in the Middle Ages. Everybody in the room would think, ‘Oh my God, he’s lost track.’ And then he’d come right around to a profound point.”

Lengthy legacy

Buford, author of Halftime and Finishing Well, preaches the importance of moving from business success to personal significance.

He knows the topic firsthand. He made a fortune when he sold his network and cable television empire in 1999 and then reinvested his “multiple millions” into his charitable foundations.

Buford’s pioneering mom, who had launched an ABC affiliate in Tyler, died in a fire at the Fairmont Hotel in Dallas in 1971. His father died when Buford was in the fifth grade.

So at 32, the eldest of three boys was thrust to the helm of his family’s television business.

Buford read every management book he could lay his hands on. By 1982, he wrote Drucker, asking to visit him at his home in Claremont. “Lo and behold he said he’d see me,” Buford says.

That meeting sets the stage for the book that comes out April 15. Advance orders are being taken on druckerandme.com.

Proceeds from the $19.99 book will go to fund the Drucker Institute at Claremont Graduate University.

Buford hopes a new generation will want to learn more about Drucker.

“The good thing about Peter is he wrote 10,000 book pages and was in Wired magazine, Foreign Affairs and other publications,” Buford says. “The bad thing about Peter is that nobody can swallow 10,000 pages. It’s like the Pacific Ocean.”

AT A GLANCE: BOB BUFORD

Title: Founder and president of the Leadership Network

Age: 74

Born: Okmulgee, Okla.

Resides: Half-time at his farm in East Texas; the other half split among Dallas, Colorado and elsewhere

Education: Bachelor of Business Administration, University of Texas at Austin, 1961

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About Cheryl Hall

MOST MEMORABLE EXPERIENCE ON THE JOB: Probably my most memorable event was with President George Bush (father) shortly after his failed bid for re-election. He'd been out of the limelight. I tried to ask him some political questions hoping to get a scoop. But he clapped me on the elbow and said, "Cheryl, one of the true joys of being out of office is I don't have to stand here and be interviewed by you. If you'd like to chat informally, I'd be happy to." I took a big breath, clapped him on the arm and said, "So George, how's the house coming?" He talked about going to Sam's and buying really big jars of spaghetti sauce. I felt like I was in the middle of a Saturday Night Live skit.

Another weird moment was going to a black-tie fete at the Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant that was gearing up to be a fresh-food concept. My "date" for the evening was Dallas restaurateur Norman Brinker, who correctly predicted that the concept would never fly.

SOMETHING PEOPLE DON'T KNOW ABOUT ME: I can be both a bleeding heart liberal and a staunch conservative -- sometimes over the same issue.

IF I HAD TWO SPARE HOURS, I WOULD: Spare hours make me nervous. Given a spare year and plenty of money, I'd travel the world with my husband and daughter.

THE GREATEST CHALLENGE TO COVERING BUSINESS IN NORTH TEXAS: Knowing all the hidden connections among the key players.

Hometown: I was born in San Antonio, but as a military brat, I lived in Japan, suburban Washington, D.C., and Louisiana growing up.

Education: I have a bachelor's of fine arts received from Southern Methodist University in 1973.

I came to work for The Dallas Morning News in May 1972 as a summer intern in the business news department and never left -- so I've been here covering business for four decades.